Related

The explosion of San Diego’s gourmet food trucks, serving everything from seared ahi and grass-fed sliders to New England lobster rolls, has brought them a level of acclaim once reserved for their brick-and-mortar rivals.

Their growing popularity, though, has yet to make them the equal of restaurants in the eyes of county health officials.

Where restaurant patrons can easily confirm the safety of the chicken, steaks and salads they’re eating by glancing at the letter grade placard posted in the window or by going online, no such system exists for mobile food operations.

Like restaurants, the county’s nearly 1,100 food trucks and coffee carts are regularly inspected each year by the county’s Department of Environmental Health to ensure foods are stored at the proper temperatures, there are adequate hand-washing facilities and all surfaces are properly sanitized.

Half of the trucks and carts operating in the last two years were written up for one or more violations, according to The Watchdog’s review of an inspections spreadsheet compiled by the department for internal use.

As with full-service restaurants, the food-truck infractions covered a wide range of findings, including refrigerated foods that were not kept cold enough, improper hand washing facilities, inadequate food handler training and potentially contaminated food surfaces. In a few instances, vermin was found by inspectors.

The county does not track food truck and food cart inspections electronically, as it does with restaurant inspections. Instead, it uses paper forms to document vendors’ violations, and inspectors record some of the details electronically for internal use.

Short of asking operators to provide their latest handwritten inspection reports, there is no handy way to identify the vehicles’ level of adherence to food safety standards.

Health inspection practices vary across the state. In Orange County, even full-service restaurants are not assigned letter grades.

Los Angeles County in 2010 expanded its restaurant letter-grading system to the more than 6,000 mobile food operations there. The goal is to help the public easily distinguish between legal trucks and those that are operating illegally.

“The real difference is the illegal operations have one characteristic: They have unsafe food conditions, everything from the lack of employee sanitation to improper food temperatures to food that comes from an unapproved source that has not been inspected,” said Terrance Powell, director of L.A. County’s bureau of specialized surveillance and enforcement.

India Jones, a food truck operating in Los Angeles, is one of hundreds in the county that have been assigned letter grades by the Department of Public Health. — Courtesy of India Jones

The department’s biggest challenge has not been issuing the letter grades but tracking down the thousands of food trucks roaming a huge, sprawling county. It still hasn’t fully transitioned to letter grades for all of the trucks.

“It’s far more important to find them now that we’re doing the grading,” he added. “L.A. has always had a dedicated vehicle inspection program, so it was a logical extension to do the grading, which is one more tool for the consumers to make informed decisions on who to patronize.”

That makes sense to San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts, who, upon learning of L.A.’s program, wondered why San Diego was not embracing letter grades for food trucks. He said he plans on asking the Board of Supervisors within the next month to introduce letter grades for vehicles that engage in food preparation.

Roberts met last week met with Environmental Health staff to make known his desire after The Watchdog and media partner 10News began asking questions.

“This seems so logical to me that I was embarrassed we weren’t already doing it,” Roberts said. “We’re doing the inspection work already so to convert those inspections to a letter grade will add to the comfort the public will have. My expectation is that we’ll see some slight overall improvement in the number of violations and corrections that are needed.”

Elizabeth Pozzebon, assistant director of the county’s Department of Environmental Health, said it had chosen not to post a grade card on trucks because they move around a great deal both within the county and outside the state and have limited hours of operation.

More recently, her department had been mulling various options — including grade cards — for providing additional food safety information to the public, she added. The department, though, did not want to initiate a new program until it transitions later this year from paper reports to an electronic system that will allow the inspection results to be viewed online, Pozzebon said.

“We are aware of what L.A. is doing and have been monitoring them to see what lessons they learn along the way,” Pozzebon said.

She pointed out that mobile food operations are required to post signage on their vehicles stating that their last inspection report is available for review at the truck. While the department provides such paper signs, several food truck operators contacted by The Watchdog said they had never been given such a sign.

“Our department is not mandated to provide them,” Pozzebon said.

Based on a random check of eight food trucks conducted by The Watchdog and 10News, five were able to produce their most recent inspection report. Three could not, and two of those mistakenly said they were not required to do so.

In San Francisco, the county’s health department does not issue letter-grade placards for restaurants or mobile facilities, but does give out numerical scores that can be viewed online. The county’s regulations state that food service establishments must post the actual inspections in a visible place “so that the public does not have to ask to see the report.”

San Diego food truck operators said they hadn’t given much thought to being part of a letter-grading system but it could benefit them.

“I would love to have a letter A on my truck,” said Marko Pavlinovic, owner of Mangia Mangia, which specializes in Italian food. “If we have the chance to get letter grades on this new generation of trucks, that will help people understand we are preparing food safely. Some people are skeptical about eating from food trucks.”

Food truck operators in Los Angeles have been generally pleased with the letter-grading system, according to the Southern California Mobile Vendors Association. Sumant Pardal, who operates India Jones in L.A., said it has raised the food safety bar for all operators.

“From a customer’s point of view, when they see a letter grade, they realize it’s a legitimate business that serves quality food,” he said. “There should be no differentiation (in food safety) whether you’re a million-dollar restaurant or a $20,000 truck.”

“I would love to have a letter A on my truck,” said Marko Pavlinovic, owner of Mangia Mangia mobile. “If we have the chance to get letter grades on this new generation of trucks, that will help people understand we are preparing food safely.” — Howard Lipin